Thursday, February 11, 2010

Project Review: CYAN's URU Scorched Earth

Scorched Earth!

Client: Cyan Worlds Inc.
Art Director: Myself
Project Date: Winter 2000


While working up in Spokane WA at Cyan Inc, famous for the Myst video-game sensation, I was working in the capacity of Production Design on the URU online form of the Myst world. In creating worlds for Rand Miller the founder, some worlds were very spelled out for me and others were very open.

Case in point, This image was generated by me when Rand gave me two words,"Scorched Earth". I begin there to conceptualize: Why is it scorched, how big is the planet, who lives there, what has the scorched provided for game-play, etc.

Apart from merely doing a fun drawing, what is behind this is that the molten core holds these "mushroom" shaped spires of land together, but each one is moving on the molten ball of lava in the center, which means the terrain is constantly moving like icebergs, bumping into one another. The scale is smaller sized for game-play reasons to see across the equator. The hotter air between land masses from the core provides lift for balloons, and zeppelins for transportation.

This world never got off the ground, as I moved on from Cyan and this was my last sketch I did for URU.

Cheers, THOM

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